Jeanette Sloan is a knitwear pattern designer and blogger. She uses her social media to highlight POC makers in the knitting community.

Having learned how to knit at age 7, Jeanette’s gone on to teach machine-knitting at Bucks New University in Buckinghamshire, and hand-knitting at The Royal College of Art in London.

Jeanette finds colour to be an important part of her design process. She will often seek out intriguing stitch patterns to give the project a stylish, contemporary edge. Her work has been featured in Simply Knitting, The Knitter, and Knitting Magazine.

Tina is a knitwear designer based in Detroit, Michigan. After studying knitwear design in college, she fell in love with the use of different fibers, colors, and textures to create her own fabric.

By day, she designs on an industrial knitting machine for the sporting goods industry. By night, she spends most of her time creating handknit designs. Tina tries to design wearable pieces for any wardrobe while still creating intriguing designs to keep the process interesting.

Yoriko is an indie yarn dyer and passionate knitter. Based out of Vancouver, she is one of the owners of Fibre Art Studio. Working alongside four other women, Yoriko is responsible for managing the Etsy shop.

With a background of training in architecture and fashion design, Yoriko approaches her art from both aesthetic and technical standpoints.

Kate O’Sullivan is a writer, photographer, and host of the Conversations From Our Days podcast. In addition to the podcast, Kate is a writer, and a natural light photographer, specializing in LGBT+ couples and their families.

Located in Edinburgh with her girlfriend and daughter, Kate’s passion is for creating content that helps every person feel safe and seen.

Brooke was seeking something more creatively fulfilling than her day job - and found it with Fully Spun, her hand-dyed yarn company. Her mission is to provide high quality, colorful, beautiful yarn to fiber artists while staying genuine and authentic to what inspires her.

Fully Spun is unique in the way that Brooke hand-dye’s the wool roving and has it spun at a mill. This process creates an effect similar to the fractal method of hand spinning. Her yarn is also special because every colorway is the translation of a visual or conceptual inspiration.

This past week I did something scary: I reached out to the Māori artists community and wrote a piece for Toi Māori Aotearoa (a nonprofit supporting the Māori arts and culture - I’ve been donating to them every month) talking about my mahi (work), feelings of displacement and creating something new and beautiful from a mix of different cultures.

This is a community that I’ve always wanted to connect with but stayed away from for the longest time out of the fear of not being “Māori enough” to qualify.

But as I wrote in the article... “Since learning how to design and establishing myself as a designer, I have learned much about my ancestry and where I come from, with this most importantly: I am enough. While I have so much still left to learn, my desire to do so now isn’t out of a need to “prove my Māori-ness” but to enrich my life and, hopefully, empower the Māori community."

The link to the article is here, I would be honored if you took a bit of time out of your day to read it - and to hear your thoughts. A lot of people who’ve read it so far really resonated with the feeling like they are not enough.

So that’s why this is the focus on this week’s episode of the Fibre Muse Podcast: Living a Creative Courageous Life.

This episode is divided into two parts. The first part dives in a bit deeper on my experience reaching out to and writing to Toi Maori Aotearoa, the fears I had to fight against and what I’m experiencing now as a result.

The second part flips the script and focuses on you: how you can start creating courageously. I’m sure just like me, you have big dreams and goals for your crafting. Whether it’s learning a new technique, putting your work out into the world, or wanting to make a connection, there’s that small voice in our heads that want to hold us back. So I’m diving into both the mechanic (the how to’s and practical strategies) and the mindset roadblocks.

Links Mentioned:

Storytime Teller: @creatyveknitstudio

Support the Show on Patreon

This show is possible thanks to the support from Patreon. Patreon is a platform that allows fans to support their favourite makers in a sustainable and easy way and get exclusive rewards in return. If you enjoy the Fibre Muse Podcast and want to support the project, you can do so for as low as $2/month. You’ll receive exclusive access to a private FB community group where you’ll be able to join me for live-recordings of the show, plus get ad-free versions of the podcast. For $5/month, you’ll get free pattern downloads at the end of the month. Thanks to your support, we are able to pay the Aroha Knits team for the hard work they do and keep the business running sustainably!

With the next collection of the Fibre Muse Quarterly coming out next Tuesday, you'll be getting an in-depth look into the stories and inspirations for the pieces and learn how each pattern ties into its respective Fibre Muse. Which Fibre Muse are you? Which pattern will you be working on during the Fibre Muse KAL?

Support the Show on Patreon

This show is possible thanks to the support from Patreon. Patreon is a platform that allows fans to support their favourite makers in a sustainable and easy way and get exclusive rewards in return. If you enjoy the Fibre Muse Podcast and want to support the project, you can do so for as low as $2/month. You’ll receive exclusive access to a private FB community group where you’ll be able to join me for live-recordings of the show, plus get ad-free versions of the podcast. For $5/month, you’ll get free pattern downloads at the end of the month. Thanks to your support, we are able to pay the Aroha Knits team for the hard work they do and keep the business running sustainably!